Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner to Speak at Yale

The recent crisis can be an opportunity for regulators and economists to learn about how financial systems work.

Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will give a lecture series at Yale this fall, based on his experiences during the financial crash.

The lectures will form the core of a university course on financial crises and the regulation of risk in the financial system.

Andrew Metrick from the Yale School of Management said Geithner has been reflecting on his time in government, and the lecture series should provide a unique view of the crash. "It's very exciting," he said. "Secretary Geithner is coming out with his new book next week, called Stress Test. I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing yet, but everything I've seen suggests that it's really a very deep dive, from his unique vantage point, into what happened in the crisis, and into financial crises in general, and how we can prevent them."

In addition, Geithner will partner with the university to construct a three-day conference for senior regulators from around the globe on designing programs to prevent financial melt-down.

Both programs are part of a wider Yale initiative on financial stability.

Metrick said the recent crisis can be an opportunity for regulators and economists to learn about how financial systems work. "When the financial system is under tremendous stress," he said, "it provides us both the requirement that we step in, and do everything that we can to prevent it from getting worse, and also the opportunity to learn a lot about its functioning."

Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller will also participate in the lecture series to talk about how the housing market contributed to the crash.